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jr0904
Joined: 24 Dec 2005
Posts: 513
Location: New York City,New York,USA
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 Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 8:04 am |
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| Proman wrote: | Ugly artistic style? What? Artistically speaking it's anything but.
Granted Shin Chan is far from pretty but that's not the point here. |
No kidding.It's rude crude and will make south park look like it was broadcasted by 4kids. IS that a good thing or not???
The only bad thing is no subs for the sub fans out there.Not to mentioned the original OP and ED. |
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The Human Spider
Joined: 19 Jan 2007
Posts: 249
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| Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 9:55 am |
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| The Risky Penguin wrote: | To me, I find that I prefer the "ugly" look more than any other stereotyped anime style for comedy (not for action or drama animes). I think it this way, because Shin Chan is more into the slap stick and jokes of the show. If they made it "pretty" it would take away of what it is. And if you look at most american adult cartoon shows, they are not very pretty also, for most likely the same reason.
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I really like SHINCHAN's art style-- it's unique and interesting to look at. I think part of the reason I'm more partial to SHINCHAN's look is I was more a fan of American cartoons, including Adult Swim,(but not 3D CGI movies) before I got seriously into anime. In general American cartoons, especially in character designs, tend to have a cruder, somewhat underdeveloped look compared to most anime, and comedies in particular tend to have a more grotesque look. I'm also reading the SHINCHAN manga and that has an even cruder art style, and I don't mean that as a criticism, I actually like it. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with SHINCHAN but I read in a review of the TOKYO ZOMBIE manga that there's actually a manga movement in which bad art is done on purpose and that manga's art(which resembles something that might have been done by a 10 year old tweaker) makes SHINCHAN like Da Vinci. Still it looks interesting and I'll probably pick it up one day. |
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Key
Moderator
Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 4533
Location: Indianapolis (formerly Mimiho Valley)
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| Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 4:34 pm |
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| The Risky Penguin wrote: | | To me, I find that I prefer the "ugly" look more than any other stereotyped anime style for comedy (not for action or drama animes). I think it this way, because Shin Chan is more into the slap stick and jokes of the show. If they made it "pretty" it would take away of what it is. |
Sorry, can't agree with this at all. I found the series entertaining entirely despite the artistry, not because of the artistry. I have seen plenty of anime comedies that can be intensely funny while still maintaining a distinctive look that actually includes respectable-quality anime artistry, and don't find "stereotyped" looks in any way to be an obstruction to humor.
| Quote: | | And if you look at most american adult cartoon shows, they are not very pretty also, for most likely the same reason. |
I'll admit that in some places looking cheap is part of the joke, but most of the productions you're talking about actually are cheaply-made. Most of those that I actually find funny are so despite their artistic quality, not because of it.
| Proman wrote: | | Granted Shin Chan is far from pretty but that's not the point here. |
No, that's entirely the point here. |
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chan wai
Joined: 02 Dec 2006
Posts: 14
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 2:53 am |
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| I thought the art is intended to be like that. |
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DavidShallcross
Joined: 19 Feb 2008
Posts: 140
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 10:33 am |
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| chan wai wrote: | | I thought the art is intended to be like that. |
The art in the anime is, I think, intended to look like the art in the manga. It's not a style I like, but it shows up in some other manga which I don't think have been brought over to the US, but I have seen quoted in Japanese the Manga Way. I still suspect that the manga-ka started out with better storytelling skills than drawing skills. |
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Greed1914
Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 617
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 1:50 pm |
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| Key wrote: | | jedimaster5000 wrote: | | I tried to watch this anime but it's not the type of anime that I really like (I suppose thats why I prefer a long comedy series, like Keroro Gunso, then this), but thats probably because it is better if I watch it from the beginning. |
Crayon Shin-chan is one of the longest-running of all anime series, with an episode count more than 2.5x that of Keroro Gunso.
| Quote: | | Anyway, I want to know 2 things about this anime. One, how many episodes does it have (and if the dub is close to it)? And two, and most important, how much Japanese reference does this anime have (if it have a lot, then that is good, since Funi will most likely be the one who also dub Gintama, which obviously a lto of people want to) |
If you're talking about the Japanese version of the series, it's over 630 episodes. Funimation has not made it clear how many episodes they plan to release for their version, but they did talk about a "second season" in the audio commentary for this volume so presumably they've committed to somewhere around 50 episodes at minimum.
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I'd say that we'll certainly see another season of the same length on DVD soon since they aired 52 episodes on Adult Swim already. I'd love it if we got more on TV, but I'm not counting on it. Although I am eagerly anticipating the next sets for this series. |
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reanimator
Joined: 25 Nov 2007
Posts: 303
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 6:42 am |
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| Key wrote: |
Okay, I'm confused about what you're getting at here. I don't at all agree that bad art should be tolerable just for the sake of having variety. As it is, there's plenty enough variety out there amongst good-looking shows. |
Key, I think you're confused because you're judging it from your established Anime/manga aesthetics. This isn't just about variety, details, and style. This isn't being different either. Good character design stands out because it has strong design contrast that stands out among generics. Bad C.D., on the other hand, has too much same design patterns which obscure contrasts. Fans like myself defend Crayon Shinchan's character design because it has very strong caricature design that sets Shinchan character apart from his friends. The show itself doesn't boast typical Anime characters design traits.
Some of us don't favor many anime character designs not because we're some kind of elitist animation nuts. I do enjoy latest incarnation of new Anime titles. No matter how pretty, most Anime character designs don't make deep impression due to its repetitive boring design patterns. If I can make following generic anime character design patterns like ones below, any fan can do the same.
1. Young female characters have the same head/face shapes
2. Excessive amount of lines to indicate strands of hair
3. One of two loose hair strands that sticks out like antenna.
4. Every young character has tapered chin
5. Excessive and blatant use of highlights reflecting off hair regardless of lighting
6. Not so defined nose and mouth, however it becomes ultra realistic at extreme closeup of those features
7. Exaggerated, but realistic body design indicating subtle body curves.
8. One sided fantasy body design on young characters.
9. Cheesy, sometimes unrealistic outfits and props
10. Eyes look flat when when viewed from Side or 3/4 view.
| Key wrote: | | Besides, name even one anime series whose character designs look uglier. Just one. |
Character design uglier than Crayon Shinchan? Air TV.
I could also pick Kannon and Clannad, but I don't want to get more fleck from some hardcore Kyoto Animation fans.
Why did I picked it as ugly? It's not because I despise to Moe-style to the core. Moe-style is attractive in some sense. The biggest problem with Air TV's character design is that character design itself has more awkward design issues other than having above Anime/manga design patterns.
Let's take a closer look at its character design. Here are the design problems:
1. Eyes are so big that its lower eyelashes parallel with nose. It looks like characters have eyes on the cheek.
2. Eyes are way set apart too wide. It seems like eyes on the side, not on the front.
3. Mouth is parallel with upper cheek. Thus making the chin look big. Because of that, mouth and nose may appear nonexistent
4. Too many straight lines on facial area. Not enough curved lines to create contrasts.
5. Big eyes are designed make character to look cute, but focusing too much on eye size makes overall facial feature freakish.
I don't have to tell you this, but I should.
The biggest problem with modern Anime character design is that it's born out of long vicious cycle of copying off popular designs from TV and Manga without going outside of their immediate creative circles. For example, what makes Katsuhiro Otomo a great manga draftsman? That's because he looked outside of usual Anime/Manga realm and found artistic inspiration from artists like Mobius.
Instead of observing real people & world and experiment with caricatures, many of future anime & manga artist hopefuls just copy and don't think. This happens to other animations and comics, not just Anime and Manga.
Here's an analogy. Otaku X was inspired to make a Dojinshi after watching a "Robot samrai Z" Anime from TV. He has great ideas, but he doesn't have strong art skill. So he starts to copy his favorite animator/character designers' style. He enhances drawing human anatomy drawing skill by using an anatomy art book. However he is focused on drawing anatomy and copying his favorite style that he forget to look at real people. For few years, he enhances his manga drawing skills by publishing and selling his Dojinshi's. At Jueisha manga artist contest, his manga story wins the contest and he becomes full fledged manga artist. Few years later, he makes a hit manga, "Detergent" and his publisher wants to make the animation. Studio Pizzarro wins the production contract and spread production workload to subcontractors. Both director and character designer reformat the manga design for animation version with their "plastic surgery" skill, but they don't have time to improve further. The production starts and two months later, Otaku Z watches the first of episode of "Detergent". 6 months later, inspired by "Detergent", Otaku Z is working hard to make his Dojinshi. The cycle repeats.
It's like visiting one of those Third world rural villages where cousins marrying each other and seeing its population with all kinds of birth defects due to incest. We know that even plastic surgery can't save a person from serious birth defect.
Air TV 's character design is like that because animation character designers couldn't salvage or incompetent to save already design-defective original character design. And that original character design comes from an artist who got too much inspiration from Anime/Manga and never looked outside. |
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Key
Moderator
Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 4533
Location: Indianapolis (formerly Mimiho Valley)
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 5:00 pm |
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| reanimator wrote: | | Key, I think you're confused because you're judging it from your established Anime/manga aesthetics. This isn't just about variety, details, and style. This isn't being different either. Good character design stands out because it has strong design contrast that stands out among generics. Bad C.D., on the other hand, has too much same design patterns which obscure contrasts. |
So, in other words, you're saying the originality vs. conformity is the real test of good vs. bad character design, and not how it appeals to the eye or what purpose it serves? Sorry, I don't buy that at all. When I think of aesthetics in judging artistry, I look purely at how appealing it is to the eye and/or how effectively it can catch and keep my attention. Originality is nice, but hardly essential. Artistry that slavishly conforms to common artistic styles, but still looks beautiful, will always still get a high rating form me, while artistry that provides an original look but does not appeal to the eye in the process will not. Whether or not the artistry was deliberately intended to look bad is mostly irrelevant.
| Quote: | If I can make following generic anime character design patterns like ones below, any fan can do the same.
<list> |
Sure, that's a pretty accurate list of the most common anime character design themes, but so what? Why do designs have to totally differ from this to look good? It's not even remotely close to true that all anime which use these design themes have the same level of quality in their artistry.
| Quote: | Character design uglier than Crayon Shinchan? Air TV.
I could also pick Kannon and Clannad, but I don't want to get more fleck from some hardcore Kyoto Animation fans.
Why did I picked it as ugly? It's not because I despise to Moe-style to the core. Moe-style is attractive in some sense. The biggest problem with Air TV's character design is that character design itself has more awkward design issues other than having above Anime/manga design patterns. |
The character designs in Air are far from my favorite, and I always did think they looked off. You put into words what I didn't like about them better than I did. But ugly, or especially uglier than Shin-chan? The vastly better production values alone carry the aesthetic better than that.
| Quote: | I don't have to tell you this, but I should.
The biggest problem with modern Anime character design is that it's born out of long vicious cycle of copying off popular designs from TV and Manga without going outside of their immediate creative circles. |
Japan is naturally a far more conformist society than, say, the U.S., so this should be no surprise. That's why, if you disregard increasing technical capabilities and period indicators like hair designs, the overall look of anime character designs has not changed much over the past 40 years. (Curiously, I have noticed that the way nudity is portrayed in anime has changed quite distinctly over time, but that's a discussion for a different thread.) Titles that break far away from the mold in Japan rarely inspire new design trends, instead remaining their own unique productions or styles unique to a particular designer; any veteran fan who stops and thinks for a moment can probably come up with several good examples of that. So in this argument I can't disagree. |
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reanimator
Joined: 25 Nov 2007
Posts: 303
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| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:00 am |
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[quote="Key"]So, in other words, you're saying the originality vs. conformity is the real test of good vs. bad character design, and not how it appeals to the eye or what purpose it serves? Sorry, I don't buy that at all. When I think of aesthetics in judging artistry, I look purely at how appealing it is to the eye and/or how effectively it can catch and keep my attention. Originality is nice, but hardly essential. Artistry that slavishly conforms to common artistic styles, but still looks beautiful, will always still get a high rating form me, while artistry that provides an original look but does not appeal to the eye in the process will not. Whether or not the artistry was deliberately intended to look bad is mostly irrelevant.
Originality vs. conformity is one thing. I do admit that my argument was focused on that. Appeal plays two ways: one being attractive, and other leaving a deep impression. The problem with appeal of current character design is that they're temporary. They're all style and no substance. No matter how beautiful they are with all those glittery details, but become forgettable. Beauty is on eyes of beholder, right? You stated that conforming to common artistic style is beautiful to you. Let me ask you this: Do you think that future generation will find current common artistic style appealing or worth remembering?
I think you downplayed originality. Conformity follows originality. Of course we know that first Anime character designs were modeled after original US animation character designs. Crayon Shin-chan didn't set some kind of industry-wide conformity with its unorthodox character designs, but Shinchan one of the most recognized character design among Japanese and Asian mainstream.
So why Shinchan character design works well? It's not about being pretty, ugly or being different. From design point of view, its silhouette leaves better impression than usual character anime designs that we're familiar. Its asymmetrical head design and simpler geometric body design make the design recognizable to anyone. For those alone, it has substance over style. For 16 years, it went through a series of design changes, but it held constant spirit of experimentation and being true to its original design principle. It never followed then-popular character designs styles of the day. Can you imagine Shinchan having flowing/spiky anime style hair, Shojo manga face and normal 5 year old body proportion?
| Quote: | | Sure, that's a pretty accurate list of the most common anime character design themes, but so what? Why do designs have to totally differ from this to look good? It's not even remotely close to true that all anime which use these design themes have the same level of quality in their artistry. |
I never implied that all Anime character designs have following design traits. Mainly mine was focused on popular and current titles. Here's another challenge. Putting all those listed patterns aside, what defines quality artistry to you?
Honestly, I don't know why character designs has to rely on listed design themes to look good. I don't find it wrong to deviate from those patterns if they become crutch. I felt that those design patterns are starting to become crutch little by little rather being stepping stone for better designs.
I'm a proponent of experimentation with trial and error. I would like to see more of it.
The character designs in Air are far from my favorite, and I always did think they looked off. You put into words what I didn't like about them better than I did. But ugly, or especially uglier than Shin-chan? The vastly better production values alone carry the aesthetic better than that.
I know why you're having doubt about AIR TV being uglier than Shinchan. Let me just explain it further. Shinchan has intentionally designed "ugly" for through years of experimentation. On the other hand, the original designer of the AIR, who is likely a fan-artist-turned-pro, never recognized design flaws that he made. He probably thought putting detail on eyes matters more than looking at overall facial design. This is why Air TV is uglier than Shinchan. Shinchan is intentional and Air is not.
For Kyoto animation folks, of course production value covers other production designs and processes. They did good job doing animation and art direction. Production value alone doesn't reflect character design appeal. For example, Sponge Bob Square pants cost $500k per episode, but its character design is not pretty. Production value becomes meaningless when they hired a character designer who just recopied original bad character design and a director who simply approved the design. Audience might not see Air TV as high production value show when it boasts badly designed characters.
| Key wrote: | | Japan is naturally a far more conformist society than, say, the U.S., so this should be no surprise. That's why, if you disregard increasing technical capabilities and period indicators like hair designs, the overall look of anime character designs has not changed much over the past 40 years. (Curiously, I have noticed that the way nudity is portrayed in anime has changed quite distinctly over time, but that's a discussion for a different thread.) Titles that break far away from the mold in Japan rarely inspire new design trends, instead remaining their own unique productions or styles unique to a particular designer; any veteran fan who stops and thinks for a moment can probably come up with several good examples of that. So in this argument I can't disagree. |
For character designs, I'm not sure how many Japanese artists, both animation and comics, understand fundamental design principle behind US animation character designs which they originally copied off from 40 years ago. For animation artists, they have to go through literally a 10 years apprenticeship before becoming respectable in the industry. At least we're enjoying good animation craftsmanship even though most designs aren't that unique. For people who come up with unique styles, only thing they need is strong PR and wider distribution.
I'm more concerned about young comic artists who are pushing their mediocre and incestrous designs to readers in the name of new idea and creativity. Majority of anime is based from manga, so it's sad to see Japanese animation artists to adapt those bad designs for animated version. Personally I really don't like manga
with bad designs making a hit and eventually getting adapted to animation. I have feeling that Anime has become an expensive marketing tool to promote Manga title.
Speaking of nudity, it's simple. It's just a fantasized human body. It's no different from American comic book fans drooling over super heroine swimsuit body. For Japanese case, they're just immature mentality of what ideal female or male body should be.
Believe it or not, Japanese animation artists are in awe by recently immigrated French artists working for them. Shin Itagaki (dir. Devil may Cry anime) lauded French artist Roman Toma (Satelite studio) as "Genius birthed by France". Anyway, in my opinion, if whole conformist society is affecting their creativity, then they should address the problem and be active in attracting creative talents outside of Japan. The problem is that they don't have any perks or benefits of being animation artist in Japan, thus unattractive to many. Those French artists decided to stay in Japan despite financial difficulties that they are facing because they saw the potential. If Japan can offer competitive offer simiar to US, I can see the possibilities of designing something out of box. |
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babynaruto1
Joined: 16 Mar 2008
Posts: 111
Location: Fair Oaks, California
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| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 5:30 am |
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| I keep on forgetting to put this at the top of my netflix queue >.<. |
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